Abstract
If performance enhancement is indeed not morally controversial in principle, why have there been so many warnings in our cultural heritage about the dangers of human enhancement? Have they been merely conservative prejudices or is there more to them? I think that there is more to them. Serious warnings dealt with the issue of whether humans are capable of judging their capacities and whether they are morally apt to enhance these capacities. We have mentioned the tragic fates of characters such as Icarus and Faustus. But their cases do not discard performance enhancement in principle. They merely address wrong ways of enhancing humans.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
—Abraham Lincoln
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Notes
- 1.
A few months after that conference, the Belgrade based Center for the Study of Bioethics has been founded.
- 2.
After our dinner I took a walk with John Harris through Vuka Karadžića Street. This street, located in the very city center of Belgrade, has become a few years later the seat of the Center for the Study of Bioethics. At that time I didn’t even plan to found the Center. The idea that a few years later it would be seated in Vuka Karadžića Street wasn’t even in my remotest imagination.
- 3.
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Rakić, V. (2021). Enhancing Performance. In: How to Enhance Morality. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72708-6_1
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